A Letter From Our Founder

I am very pleased to announce the official “birth” of the Center for Parental Leave Leadership in the United States!

CPL Leadership is the first consulting and coaching company devoted exclusively to helping our nation’s companies improve their parental leave policy and practice. We think it is high time.

The United States would not be ready for a consulting firm like CPL Leadership were it not for the dedication and hard work of countless people who’ve pioneered parental leave progress over the last four decades. In founding CPL Leadership, I’m attempting to honor their work as well as keep a promise to myself that I made nearly nine years ago after the birth of my first child.

At that time, I found myself battered by the unexpected physical trauma of an unplanned cesarean, broken by the sucker punch of severe postpartum mental health issues, and shocked that I was so ill prepared. I had not made a single contingency plan for my work. As a career driven and ambitious woman, and as the primary breadwinner for my family, I had committed to being back on the job just three weeks after giving birth.

When I was simply a working person, this had seemed completely logical, but I had just become a working parent and I had to face the reality that what I had set up for myself was now impossible. On one particularly dark night, I sat crying through the agony of failed breastfeeding and the sting of loneliness too many new mothers experience. That night, I swore to myself that if I got through that time, I would do whatever I could to make sure no woman ever felt what I was feeling. It is a promise that has driven me ever since.

Today, the Center for Parental Leave Leadership comes from a much brighter and inclusive place: a place of knowing that when smart people collaborate and work toward a shared vision, we can truly transform our country, our companies, and the lived experience of all our working parents—both women and men. We are already seeing it happen.

Our work is not about improving life just for our parents or improving profits just for our companies—it is about both. We are working toward a new social contract. Today, our work lives and our family lives are intricately combined; we are not one without the other. It is by supporting working parents that companies gain strength; and, it is by being supported that working parents develop into their best selves, which they then bring back into their companies.

We are thrilled to be here and look forward to being on this parental leave progress journey with you.